What is this? The COVID-19 pandemic has increased demand on hospital emergency departments. Research into alternative ways of managing less urgent cases (such as walk-in centers and General Practitioner cooperatives) may provide information that would help ease this demand.

In this systematic review, the authors searched for research on the effects of walk-in centers and General Practitioner (GP) cooperatives on local ED attendances. They restricted their search to articles published in English between 2000 and 2014. They included 4 studies of walk-in centres (all done in the UK) and 7 studies of GP cooperatives (which were done in Australia (1 study), Ireland (1), The Netherlands (4) and Switzerland (1)).

What’s uncertain: The effects of walk-in centers on ED attendance are uncertain.

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